


It's not so Bad

by Androids_in_Metropolis



Series: Maximoff/Barton Family Relations ft. Auntie Nat [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Caring!Natasha, Cute, F/M, Fluff, Gen, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Sick Fic, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, caring!clint, loving family, sick pietro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:18:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4827101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Androids_in_Metropolis/pseuds/Androids_in_Metropolis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pietro is sick and Clint and Natasha both have painful childhood memories they would rather not Pietro have as well, trying to make his illness as pleasant as posable. </p><p>In other words, they love the little twerp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's not so Bad

**Author's Note:**

> First try after the intro; I hope you enjoy it!

Clint was woken in the middle of the night by a soft knock on he and Laura’s bedroom door, jerking himself awake with the familiar sound. It was likely just one of the children wanting a drink of water or a cuddle or something along those lines, and Clint, just home from a mission in Hong Kong was more than willing to give it. He had missed his kids-All five of them. 

Pulling himself out of bed, careful not to wake Laura, he was surprised to find his eldest son standing awkwardly in the doorway, looking more than a little lost and confused. The white haired teen looked shaken, his eyes wide, his arms wrapped around himself. He was wearing a pair of striped pajama bottoms with a much-too-large for him T-shirt falling around his knees. The sixteen year old looked closer to six and Clint was scared, quickly coming to his side and wrapping an arm around his thin shoulder (too thin, maybe?). 

“What’s the matter, buddy?” he asked, looking Pietro over, trying to find some point of pain or ailment. Pietro seemed to be slowly collapsing in on himself, looking close to tears. Clint was more than a little shaken, quickly taking the teen into his arms, letting him rest his head on his shoulder, recognizing that his breathing was dangerously rapid. “Come on, tell me what the matter is, hon,” he mumbled into a mop of white hair, running a hand through it in what he hoped was a soothing manner. 

Pietro shuddered, holding tightly to Clint, relieving the pain of near death over and over in his head. He didn’t want to raise any false alarms, but that coupled with the very real pain he was feeling in his chest was enough to push him into a full on anxiety whirlpool. He held tightly to Clint’s jumper, his thin fingers caught in the wool; This man was his lifeline, a thin string holding him to the real world. 

“It hurts,” he whimpered, his breathing rough. He knew he needed to work to calm himself down, not wanting to give himself an asthma attack, but that seemed more difficult than it should be as Clint’s arms circled around him, simultaneously making him feel safe and claustrophobic. He wasn’t sure which feeling he valued more, and so he didn’t move, willing Clint’s grasp not to get any tighter but hoping he wouldn’t pull away. 

“What hurts?” Clint asked, his mind immediately jumping to all the possible options. It could be anything from the pain of an asthma attack or a flash back to the pain of a broken limb or stomach ache or head pains or...the options were seemingly infinite and going from the extra-ordinary aches and pains to the extraordinary ones. “Show me where hurts,” he commanded, his voice not betraying howe shaken he felt. Pietro wasn’t one to complain; Egg on, berate, joke, pun, or otherwise annoy and marry make, yes, but ask for help? No, not the boy he knew. 

Pietro took a ragged breath, pointing to his chest. 

“it hurts right here. It wasn’t that bad, but then I started remembering and it hurt more and more. It’s so bad,” he whimpered, his accent stronger than it had been in months. He was obviously shaken by his own weakness, and Clint began to understand the situation, glad it was just a panic attack and not something more serious. A panic attack he could deal with, and routinely did. 

“Come on, come here,” he whispered, carefully guiding the teen down the stairs and to the kitchen where he instructed him to sit on the counter as he went about grabbing a glass of water and some of his own panic medications, instructing Pietro to swallow them and watching as he did so. He knew that the younger had an increased heart-rate and so he honestly wasn’t sure how his body would react to being medicated but he hoped it would work since he wasn’t running. “Take this,” he mumbled, passing him a small, blue tranquilizer and watching Pietro swallow it, already a blank look of calm settling over his face. Clint guided the teen carefully off the counter and back to bed, his arm never leaving the other’s shoulders as his steps grew more and more erratic and sluggish, his heart rate seeming to metabolize the meds at a rapid pace. 

After Pietro was safely tucked into bed Clint returned to his own bed, falling in next to Laura, emotionally and physically spent. He had been scared by Pietro’s behavior; He was just a kid. He didn’t want to medicate him, even reluctant to have him on his meds for asthma. Kids shouldn’t have to be popping pills, but it was becoming more and more apparent that the white haired-speedster was suffering from some sort of mild PTSD (as he had every right to be. He’d lived a hard life, for his sixteen years) and he fell asleep wondering if maybe it was cruel to not be medicating him for it. 

Laura woke to the sound of Clint quickly swinging out of bed, sitting up quickly herself, already on high alert. 

“What’s going on?” she asked, looking at Clint as he came out of the bathroom, toothbrush hanging from his crooked mouth, his left hand working to put on his hearing aide without help from his right. He seemed to be in a hurry considering he just got back...he wasn’t leaving already was he? Honestly, the way he came and went so often, it wasn’t far. Then again, what is, Laura reminded herself, crawling out of bed and wrapping her arms around her husband's shoulders. 

“No, nothing, everything’s fine,” Clint told her, turning around and wrapping his own arms around her. “I was just ready to be up,” he said, surprisingly enough, it was the truth. Sometimes he just couldn’t sit still, just didn’t want to waste any more time laying around. He had already forgotten about the scare the night before, already pushing it behind him out of habit. 

“Oh, well, if that’s it, I’m going back to bed,” Laura laughed, planting a soft kiss on his cheek before swerving back into bed, burying herself under a mountain of quilts and pillows. She was exhausted, even if Clint was ready to battle the sun for it’s shine. 

By twelve that afternoon everyone in the house excepting the eldest of the twins was up, leaving everyone else to worry over him, Wanda’s eyes wandering towards the stairs and Pietro’s bedroom every time the old stairs would creek with the wind or a tree branch would brush past a window leaving a whispering sound in it’s wake. Finally Natasha decided it was time to check on him, well and worried by two in the afternoon, walking quietly up to the teen’s bedroom and letting herself in. She was shocked to find he wasn’t there, quickly swerving to the bathroom between he and Wanda’s bedrooms, following a sinking feeling in her gut as she heard a gag followed by a whimper from the afore mentioned room. 

“Pietro, I’m coming in,” She called softly, not waiting for a reply before she opened the unlocked door, finding the white haired teen curled up the the toilet, his face an ashen colour and his eyes half closed against the late afternoon sunlight pouring through the window. She sat down beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders much as Clint had done the night before. “Oh, baby,” she mumbled, letting him rest his head on her shoulder, heavy and half asleep. She wondered how long he had been awake…

“It hurts,” he mumbled, again, echoing the previous night, his thoughts a haze as they swirled and tried to form decent words in his mind. Three languages were swirling in his brain, and it had never felt so hard to differentiate between them, surprising Natasha as he told her it hurt in Russian (his mother’s mother tongue). 

“I know, I know,” she replied in the familiar language, rubbing soft circles onto his hunched back, waiting for some sort of signal of what to do next. Pietro didn’t move, just laying with his head on her shoulder, his arms wrapped around his knees, his eyes half closed and his breathing quick and shallow. He wondered why he was so tired...was it still the pills from the night before? He hoped not. Pills were harder to overcome than simple mortality. 

Half an hour later Pietro was fast asleep against Natasha and she thought it was a safe time to take out her mobile and text the Barton parents, telling them what was going on without waking the sleeping teen at her side. He was shivering, a fever no doubt wracking his body, reminding her more than a little of herself as a teen about his age, sick as a dog and doing pirouettes in front of an angry dance teacher saying she was shaking too badly. She pushed the memory away, determined to not give Pietro any reason to cry over a simple stomach bug. She had cried herself to sleep, not from exhaustion or pain, but from simple anger at not being able to tell them what was going on and knowing no one would care if she had. 

 

Barton picked up his phone as it rang, distracted by Wanda and Jacob giving him a dramatic rendition of ‘Street Fighters’ main fight on the front lawn, watching as Lily cheered them on from the sidelines, as yet a little young for the intense battle going on between the two older children. Wanda was obviously letting the little boy win, bringing a laugh from Laura’s lips as she rocked Nathaniel gently on her lap as she watched. Clint quietly excused himself from the performance, quickly sprinting up the stairs to find his runner and his best friend curled up on the cold white tiles of the bathroom floor, Natasha gently brushing his curls out of his face with one pale and. 

“How long’s he been here?” Clint asked, getting down on his knees beside the two, thermometer in hand, already preparing for the sad task of waking up the obviously exhausted teen and getting him to either the couch or his bed with some juice and a trash can. He doubted the younger male had tried to keep hydrated, and Natasha wouldn’t have had time after she found him. 

“I dunno, maybe three hours by now?” Natasha guessed, scrunching her nose a little as she worked out the times. Yeah, three hours seemed about right, also seemingly infinitely long as she realised how long a time the poor kid had probably been sitting alone based on the state she had found him in. Yeah, about three hours. 

Clint nodded, slowly and carefully shaking his son awake, careful not to jostle him too much and wincing as the younger leaned forward gagging anyway. He really looked so young and so tired and so hurt. He was just a kid...he probably didn’t get what was going on. From what he could tell, Pietro had gotten sick often as a child, but he had always just slept it off, no medicine and no bed and no mom or dad or aunt or anybody to come and make sure he was okay, only a twin sister that while caring didn’t know any better than he himself had. He probably didn’t remember it, every new illness a new and fresh betrayal. 

“Here, baby,” he whispered, tilting Pietro’s head back as he put the thermometer under his tongue, one hand resting on the teen’s shoulder to steady him as Nat got up and stretched her legs which had long since fallen asleep, crushed underneath her. The instrument beeped, reading Thirty-nine point four; A high fever. “Shh,” he soothed, taking the thermometer from Pietro’s mouth, carefully picking him up bridal-style, grunting at the younger’s weight, though really, he wasn’t much heavier than Jacob. That was a little concerning, but Clint figured he was sick, and it probably had to do with his metabolism, anyway. “To the couch,” he mumbled, guiding Nat out of the bathroom, watching as she nicked the silver rubbish bin from beside the toilet, carrying it with them down the stairs and putting it at the foot of the couch after Clint had situated the young teen at the other end, wrapping him tightly in a quilt and wandering off to the kitchen to get a glass of juice and some pain killers with a side of dry toast. 

Nat stayed with Pietro on the couch, not letting her gaze falter from him. She was really quite fond of children and didn’t want them to ever be in pain...especially not her nieces and nephews. Especially not them...She wrapped her arm around his shoulders again, trying to keep him awake until Clint returned. 

Clint set the pills down on the table with the juice and toast, pulling a stool over next to the couch where Nat, Pietro, and a rubbish bin resided. He gently coaxed juice and toast into Pietro, explaining everything to Laura as she came into the house, having left Nathaniel with Jacob under Lily and Wanda’s keen watch. She pouted, biting her lip in understanding, peeking over the couch to find both Nat and Pietro fast asleep, the younger kid wrapped up in Nat’s arms, looking almost content if it wasn’t for the flush that decorated his cheek bones and the thin layer of white blond stubble across his chin. He had been too tired to shave when he had gotten up due to the pain in his stomach and head. 

“poor baby,” she sympathized before going to the kitchen to start on dinner for the rest of the family. 

Nat didn’t leave Pietro’s side through that night and the next day, helping him to and from the bathroom, holding him tightly and telling him he would be alright until his fever broke on the third night, leaving him sleeping peacefully in her arms under Clint’s watch and Wanda and Laura’s blessing as they wrestled the other kids into bed. 

Pietro woke on the third day feeling half way better, and knowing for sure that family ‘wasn’t so bad.’ Nat was just glad that he was still tucked into her arms, watching a soap and eating a piece of dry toast, chatting in a scratchy voice to Wanda who had taken Clint’s post in watching over her red-headed aunt and white haired brother. She was just glad Pietro was back to talking. 

“See, being sick is not so bad,” she teased, her accent thick though her words were clear. She smiled at Pietro, holding his hand tightly in her’s, a little disconcerted by his beard and amused by Nat’s protectiveness. 

This is what family was supposed to be, that she was sure of. Clint and Laura looked on from the doorway, Nathanial in Clint’s arms and Lily and Jacob climbing all over their mother, glad to have the whole family together for more than a few days. 

Clint had the sinking feeling in his chest that this was their family...that they were really a family now, and he wasn’t sure how that made him feel. A bit melancholy, he guessed, because while he was was happy to have the twins and Nat it hurt knowing that they were only there because their first families weren’t. 

Laura squeezed her husband’s hand, seeing the fleeting look of sadness flicker across his face.

**Author's Note:**

> Review for me? Please?   
> :)


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